The boom in the headphone business may have been fueled by a hip-hop beat, but a new player in the market is hoping to make a little noise with country and rock music.

This month Kickstarter-funded California Headphone Co. is shipping its first few thousand headphones. Designed for fans of country, alternative and rock music, the Danville company's products must compete with a line of headphones from country music star Tim McGraw, but not much else.

The headphones were inspired by those from Santa Monica's Beats by Dr. Dre, a which emphasize the bass sounds found in rap and hip-hop music. Headphones with Beats' lowercase "b" logo have been spotted on hundreds of Olympic athletes in London. The headphones have quickly become fashionable, helping double U.S. headphone sales from August 2010 to August 2011.

Since the beginning of 2011, headphones priced at $100 and above have gone from 28 percent of headphone sales to 42 percent, according to the NPD Group's Retail Tracking Service.

Toning down the bass

The only other major premium brand specifically tuned for the country and rock genres is from JBL, which partnered with McGraw to introduce the headphones. Country music albums outsold rap albums in the United States by 150 percent in 2011, according to Nielsen SoundScan, so there's a possibility that country/rock headphones could do even better than rap/hip-hop styles have.

"As big as country is, nobody has tapped that," said California Headphone's designer and co-founder David Adam.

He said California Headphone's two models - the $200 Silverado and the $100 Laredo - provide a clear, balanced sound where bass is present but not overemphasized.

Ben Arnold, NPD's director of industry analysis, recently wrote that strategic partnerships and endorsements are becoming vital for headphone companies because of the crowded market and the lack of opportunities for consumers to test them.

California Headphone is trying to stand out with a grassroots, California-cool image. One stumbling block could be that the headphones, like most other consumer electronics products, have been manufactured overseas, where costs are lower. Adam said he spent weeks running around China searching for the perfect factory before settling on one in Shenzhen.

"Our brand might benefit from having it made in the U.S.," he said. "But to launch, we're tight on cash, so we're limited."

Leather and chrome

Though the company set out to raise only $100,000, about 1,200 people have donated a total of $178,000 to California Headphone's Kickstarter campaign to secure the first pairs of headphones.

They are made with leather and gunmetal chrome. All have an in-line jack that allows another listener to plug in their own headphones. After listening to feedback from customers, California Headphone's next set of units also will include an in-line microphone.

The products are part of a growing line of tech accessories from business executive Tim Hickman. He's behind brands such as Speck Products, Hard Candy Cases and Gumdrop Cases for smartphones and tablet computers.

Hickman said California Headphones will be sold at retailers in the United States, United Kingdom, France and South Korea beginning next month. Online, they are exclusively available via the California Headphone website. A limited number of discounted preorders are available through crowd-funding service Kickstarter until the end of the week.

"It's crazy to think four years ago, premium audio was the white Apple earbuds," Hickman said. "It was a mark that you had arrived back then."